Monday, July 16, 2007

Sunday's Luann

Funny that this Luann should come out ten days after a study on the same subject that found:

Another stereotype — chatty gals and taciturn guys — bites the dust. Turns out, when you actually count the words, there isn't much difference between the sexes when it comes to talking.

A team led by Matthias R. Mehl, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Arizona, came up with the finding, which is published in Friday's issue of the journal Science. The researchers placed microphones on 396 college students for periods ranging from two to 10 days, sampled their conversations and calculated how many words they used in the course of a day.

It's interesting because, as J. Goodrich points out, studies that show that men and women are different gain more traction in the media than those that don't. Since there was such a big hullabaloo over this study, and since it came out a little under two weeks ago, one has to wonder if the writer of Luann just chose to ignore it, misconstrue it, or if the comic was written right before it came out and she he now feels a little silly.

I suppose that writing Luann would make someone constantly feel silly, so that's not that big of a deal.